


My One in Particular

by BC_Brynn



Series: Naruto One-Shots [6]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Closet-Smashing, Emotional Roller Coaster, Fix-It, Flangst With a Happy Ending, Hinata Is Graceful, Hokage-ing, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Idiots with Crushes, M/M, Naruto Gets Smacked With a Clue, Naruto Has No Clue, Pranking, Sadness & Silliness, Shikamaru Seduces, To Liberate the Clueless Boy Inside, at least partially, post-canon-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 23:33:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14224230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BC_Brynn/pseuds/BC_Brynn
Summary: Shikamaru speaks up before Naruto commits his life to an illusion. For a while everything hurts, but afterwards it heals better.





	My One in Particular

**Author's Note:**

> I had an idea on the bus, and it wasn’t a particularly busy day at work. Also, I am so brainwashed.
> 
> This story has absolutely nothing to do with Soft as an Unready Mind, except that I’m obviously still leaking ShikaNaru feels.
> 
> ‘My one in particular’ is a reference to the Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness, which is both amazing and terrible. The kind of reading that hurts you and stays with you.
> 
> There is serious sadness in this story. Please heed the warnings – detailed ones are in the end note.

“ _Ja ne_ ,” said Kakashi, and an instance later he was gone.

The Hokage hat awkwardly flopped to the floor.

Naruto went to pick it up, because it felt wrong to just leave it there. Behind his back the ANBU protection detail scrambled and tried – in vain, they all knew – to catch up to man they were supposed to protect. Who could kick all their arses for a week straight while re-reading his favourite porn book.

“Eight days,” guessed Shikamaru.

Naruto shook his head. “Six.”

“You’re on.”

They each put a hundred ryou into Sandaime’s cracked mug that served as a not-so-secret bank for the office pool. Naruto as the ‘assistant to the Rokudaime Hokage’ was the keeper and protector of it, but the problem mostly solved itself with the application of a crafty little seal. Besides, no one who wasn’t a straight-up traitor would dare try and steal something from the Hokage’s office.

“What’s with the sudden faith?” Shikamaru inquired idly, while outside the purplish glow of late sunset slowly dimmed into the indigo of night. “Last time he was gone for almost two weeks.”

“There’s that diplomatic thing with the Kiri ambassadors,” Naruto reminded him.

Shikamaru was supposed to attend as well, in his capacity as the Hokage’s advisor. It was unlikely that he had forgotten, given how much he had moaned that it was ‘too troublesome’.

“Yeah,” Shikamaru agreed, “but he won’t come back for it.”

“Oh, he will.” Naruto grinned. “I was very worried and asked Gai to make sure to remind him. Kakashi’ll be there. With bells on.”

Shikamaru hummed. He looked so unabashedly impressed (undeservedly, since using Gai to make sure Kakashi got somewhere on time was not exactly an original idea) that Naruto felt colour rise in his cheeks.

“You know he just does it in the hopes that you’ll basically become Hokage by osmosis?” Shikamaru pointed out.

“Osmo-what?” Whatever osmo-thing was, Naruto knew exactly what Kakashi was doing. They had a silent agreement on the topic, which basically meant that Naruto did the job and only bothered with corralling Kakashi into doing stuff when diplomacy demanded it or when Naruto faced a problem he couldn’t solve on his own.

Which reminded him of the pile of paperwork that Kakashi had been strategically shifting between the corners of the desk over the course of the afternoon, and probably had not even glanced at.

“Lock the door,” he said, flopping into Kakashi’s chair and reaching for the topmost piece of paper. “Office hours are over. And, hey, if nobody barges in with an emergency, I might be done with this before midnight.”

Kakashi’s absence from the Tower had one advantage – things got done faster and lot more efficiently. Naruto did not doubt at all that that was Kakashi’s intention. In fact, sucking and getting in the way of everybody was Kakashi’s life-long way of doing things and getting out of having to do more things.

Shikamaru locked the door – from the inside, to Naruto’s mild surprise.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to keep you-”

“I’m not leaving you alone here,” Shikamaru protested. “You should have gotten your own ANBU detail months ago, but so long as you keep refusing it, you’ll have to deal with me.”

Naruto rolled his eyes. “You’re saying that like it’s a hardship. Damn it, this is like reverse Academy. We’re playing hooky from our free time to do somebody else’s job.”

“Kakashi’s lucky he’s got a sucker like you to pick up the slack.”

Naruto playfully sneered at the Hokage’s (or, mostly Naruto’s, actually) advisor. “Yeah, because there’s no other place _you_ would rather be. If I’m a sucker, so are you.”

There was supposed to be a snippy answer, but none was forthcoming. The silence stretched so long that Naruto looked up from comparing the revised trade-agreement with Ame to Chouza-san’s notes.

Shikamaru was watching him as if Naruto was a particularly fascinating cloud. “And if there isn’t a place where I would rather be?”

“What?” Naruto scratched at his cheek. “Hey, Shikamaru, if you need time off you can tell me. I can’t promise the Tower won’t fall apart while you’re gone, but-”

“That’s really not it.”

Naruto didn’t get it.

He knew what it was like to be lonely, and to be haunted by the memories of all the people they lost in the war, and it sucked to spend a lot of time at home. So he went out, with Hinata or alone, and met with everybody, and had fun.

“Maybe you should find a girlfriend,” Naruto mused. “Then you wouldn’t prefer staying late at work to going home.”

Something in the atmosphere twisted. Naruto couldn’t describe it any better. It wasn’t chakra or killing intent, and it wasn’t like it suddenly got any colder, but it almost felt like that. Shikamaru turned away from him, but even so Naruto could see his expression. It wasn’t a nice one.

He knew he had said something wrong, but he didn’t get what. Had – had Shikamaru had someone? And lost them? But – no, he didn’t seem like he was grieving for somebody secret, and nobody would hide that much from his friends. Right? Or was he just missing someone? Um… Temari, maybe? Because Suna wasn’t that far away and this problem was totally solvable.

“I could-”

“Admit that Hinata is your friend and you two are only dating because _she_ wants to,” Shikamaru drawled.

Naruto choked on what was going to be an offer of a specifically tailored mission to the Land of Wind. “What?! Wait, what are you talking about?”

Shikamaru facepalmed. “You’re dating like you’re twelve, not eighteen.”

Naruto blinked. “We… we are?” He had never dated anybody before. He counted on Hinata to tell him what to do. Which, granted, wasn’t exactly Hinata’s strong side.

“I knew you were gay, or at least leaning heavily, when we were thirteen.”

“Whaaat?! How?!” Naruto had no clue now. He had had less than no clue then.

Shikamaru opened one eye to glare blearily at him and said, dry as desert dunes: “Your rhapsody about Neji’s hair might have had something to do with it.”

Naruto shot to his feet before he realised what he was doing.  He walked across the office, as far away from Shikamaru as he could get, momentarily consumed by the raw pain that whited out everything. He heard only the rush of blood in his ears and even the stuff he saw was on the very edge of perception.

He squeezed his eyes shut, stood face to a wall, and tried to breathe through it. It felt like his organs wanted to tear out of his body and fly away. Like he could vomit up everything inside him, including his lungs and heart and maybe then he wouldn’t feel like he was made of lead.

“Shit,” he heard Shikamaru say somewhere behind him.

There was movement, and even paralysed by a sudden onslaught of grief Naruto was still a ninja. He dodged, almost tripped over his own ankle, and righted himself before he took a header into Kakashi’s windowsill.

Shikamaru let his arm fall down to his side. Oh. So, not an attack.

Still, after that sentence, there wasn’t much of a difference. Did Shikamaru cut him open just so he could have the chance to sew him up?

Wait, no, Shikamaru wasn’t that kind of an arsehole.

Was he?

And _Naruto_ wasn’t that kind of an arsehole either!

“I would not do that to Hinata!” he snarled. He didn’t quite recognise his own voice.

Shikamaru hung his head and pulled on his ponytail, so hard it had to have hurt. “Look, no, that’s not what I meant.”

But it was. And if it wasn’t, Naruto knew, it _should_ have been. Because Hinata was as close as he could get to… that… and he hadn’t ever noticed, and he should have, and this was the shittiest thing ever to do to somebody but he _didn’t mean to_ and why hadn’t anybody pulled him aside and told him when they all knew he was an idiot-

“Stop!” Shikamaru snapped. “Damn it, Naruto, you’re such a pain. Sit down before you think yourself into a panic attack.” He might have added something about how Naruto shouldn’t be allowed to think unsupervised under his breath, and that was kinda the most reassuring thing he had said the whole evening.

“I would not do that,” Naruto repeated quietly, backing away until he had the Hokage’s desk strategically between them. He would have sat down, too, except that would have made it harder to escape if Shikamaru tried to trap him.

Shikamaru sighed. “I know that. She told you she loved you. That kind of thing, when someone means it – that’s powerful. It’s a game-changer. And you’re not desensitised to it-”

You could get _desensitised_ to love confessions? Naruto hadn’t thought that was possible.

“-so of course you would crave it.”

Naruto remembered how that felt. Hearing _I love you_ , without any qualifiers, without any demands attached to it. Like stepping out into sunlight after a long, freezing night, feeling warmth seep through his skin where he had been so cold he had thought he would start losing fingers soon.

Hinata gave that to him, and he wanted to give it back. He hadn’t figured out how yet, but he was working on it, and he had thought he hadn’t done too shabbily.

But this thing Shikamaru was talking about, that was different. Not just about wanting to give things – but about wanting to take, too. And he maybe did, sometimes, with some people, but he wouldn’t _just take_ , and he didn’t know how to ask, didn’t even know what to ask for, and-

“This is partly our fault,” Shikamaru said, looking kinda angry. Angry Shikamaru was scary. He could come out of blue at unexpected angles and hamstring people’s feelings. “We keep holding our cards too close to our chests.”

“What cards?!” What did gambling have to do with this? Sandaime’s Mug wasn’t about _cards_. Why did Shikamaru have to make everything sound so complicated?

“I’ve been walking at your shoulder for years now, Naruto, because making your dream come true became my dream somewhere along the way, and I thought that would be enough. But maybe you need to hear these things spelled out, and maybe I need to say it out loud for myself as well.”

“Say _what_?!” Naruto was completely lost.

And apparently he was a huge jerkwad, even though he had tried really hard with dating Hinata and she didn’t seem unhappy, but how the hell could you tell? Shikamaru had not seemed unhappy either, and right now he looked like he was in serious danger of pulling out all his hair or maybe crying.

Naruto could not really imagine Shikamaru crying.

His heart squeezed.

Now _Naruto_ was crying.

“Shit,” Shikamaru repeated. “Shit, I’ve done this all wrong. Goddamnit.” He gave his hair one last vicious twist and finally looked up. “Look, there’s all these stopgap measures, with the Rokudaime and this contrived _assistant_ job, but when it comes down to me, _you_ are my Hokage. The things I do, I do with that in my mind. So I want to – _I need to_ – know, if this is a stopgap measure, too. Because there are all these long-term plans, and if you are going to commit to this, I need to adjust some of them.”

Naruto tried to give him an answer, but he couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t another completely confused ‘what?’ and that wouldn’t have helped. He stared at his friend and advisor who stared back at him, and the silence that fell around them was full of hurt feelings and tinged with helplessness.

“Naruto…” Shikamaru said softly, “…please?”

Naruto wiped his cheeks with his knuckles. He had to say something, and for all that Sakura kept grumbling at how unfairly good with words he was, he felt like he was as good as mute _and_ foreign right now. “I didn’t know. Any of this. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’ll figure it out. I promise. Believe it?”

Shikamaru was startled into a spasm that was half-chuckle, half-cough. He rubbed at his chest with his fist, and then nodded. “I do.”

x

After the weird conversation with Shikamaru yesterday they both decided to go home rather than stew in the uncomfortable air between them, so Naruto got up early ( _before sunrise_ early) and came in to do paperwork. It was barely after lunch, and if he remained in the office for a minute longer his own brain would mutate and eat him in self-defense.

“Oh good,” Ino said the moment she spotted him walking through the door of the shop. “He finally broke.”

“What?” Naruto said. He had repeated that word far too many times lately, and that wasn’t even getting into how often it echoed through his skull.

“Are all boys so emotionally constipated?” inquired Sakura, playing around with a bush that bloomed really pretty and smelled kind of nice, too, and could probably kill a ninja in ten seconds or something.

“I’ve got a cousin that’s not,” Ino replied with her chin in her palm, elbows resting on the shop counter. “Straight, too. I can introduce you if you want. Actually, I’ll introduce you even if you don’t want – you might be the best adjusted member of the original Team Seven, but that’s like saying a pinhead is bigger than a grain of sand. He’d do you a world of good.”

Sakura shot her a glare that made Naruto shudder, but somehow nothing in the room broke. He dared shuffle closer.

“So-”

“This is a flower shop, Naruto,” Ino pointed out.

There was another ‘what’ in Naruto’s head; he was pretty sure this statement was somehow a trick, but he couldn’t figure it out. It _was_ a flower shop. It sold flowers. There were a lot of them everywhere around. On account of it _being a flower shop_.

Ino rolled her eyes. “It’s not a therapist’s office. Daddy’s right, we should charge for these walk-ins. We get more than the whole psych department put together.”

“Half of them are gossip mongers coming to pump you for information, and the other half are your friends,” Sakura pointed out. “But if you’d prefer to go back to being rivals-”

“ _Emotionally constipated_ ,” Ino returned, looking down at Sakura with exaggerated disappointment. “Darling, if you want to manipulate me, learn some subtlety first.” She pouted and flicked an invisible speck of dust away from the edge of her neckline.

“I don’t need subtlety,” retorted Sakura. “I’ve got an oleander.”

“I think you’ll find that _I_ have got an oleander, and I let you use it out of the goodness of my heart. I could make you pay for it like I do the Hospital.”

“Err,” said Naruto, before they started fighting. Or… or maybe not fighting. The words were fighting, but their expressions and… and body language… were not. Kind of maybe like Naruto sometimes wanted to punch Sasuke in the face not to hurt him, but to reassure him that Naruto always remembered that Sasuke might have been a homicidal moron, but he was still _theirs_.

“Right.” Ino turned to him with a smile that reminded Naruto of that blue guy that used to go around with Itachi. “So, lazyarse finally opened his mouth and let words tumble out of it. Dare I hope he managed to get to the point, too?”

Depending on what was the point. Naruto had this feeling that Shikamaru had probably addressed several points, but aside from the Naruto-probably-liking-guys point he didn’t notice anything even vaguely pointy in that conversation.

“No, of course not,” Ino continued before Naruto could formulate an answer. “Because that would have been far too practical. That man is a walking irony – his own biggest pain in the arse.”

“Um,” said Naruto.

Ino sighed. “Yes, fine, I’ll help you extract your head from- Hello, actual customers!” A salesperson smile appeared on her face as the two young civilian men walked in. She fluttered around them, quickly discovering which one wanted a bouquet and what the occasion was: first time meeting the girlfriend’s parents. Which was apparently trickier than it sounded.

Naruto couldn’t guess. He knew Hinata’s Father, and had to keep biting his tongue around him, because he could start blood feuds with the things he wanted to say to his stupid face. But that was before… before. And now he wasn’t sure he could take it, facing what Neji would have looked like if he had gotten a couple more decades and-

“You okay?” Sakura asked quietly while Ino conned the customer into purchasing a more understated yet more expensive bouquet.

Naruto shook his head and refused to look in her direction.

Ino came back just as things were getting seriously awkward – about ten seconds before Sakura solved the awkwardness with casual violence – rolling her eyes and complaining: “I swear Sai is, like, a thousand times more in touch with his emotions than all you morons.”

“ _Sai_?” Sakura exclaimed, realising that the pinhead comparison had excluded Sai, and how big an insult it had actually been. “Really?”

Ino rolled her eyes _again_. “Sai actually knows his weaknesses. He’s worked for a long time to identify his limitations and create workarounds, and he’s very perceptive. _Very_ perceptive.” She turned to Naruto and sighed. “Unlike some.”

Naruto cringed. “Yeah, but-”

“I give you that _you_ -” Ino jabbed her finger into Naruto’s upper arm, fortunately without chakra, so it probably wouldn’t even bruise. “-are just an idiot, and not a coward. You’re going to man up and solve your own cesspit of a situation. Am I right?”

“Believe it!” Naruto assured her, enthusiasm flagging. _Cesspit_. Ino was merciless. But also often right, so in the end listening to her was usually worth it.

“Right, back to your cranial-rectal extraction,” Ino said sagely, and then failed to suppress a grin when Sakura snorted. “I realise the risk I am taking with giving a boy this advice, but you need to _talk_ to Hinata. Just sit down and be honest with one another for at least half an hour. It’ll hurt. Conventional wisdom says to bring copious amounts of alcohol.”

Naruto swallowed. He wasn’t very good with alcohol, and Hinata had a complicated relationship with it – never drank in public and tended to have breakdowns when more than tipsy. At least according to Kiba, who shared this in confidence and out of friendly concern, while he was threatening Naruto’s manhood if Naruto ever hurt Hinata.

Which Naruto was about to do.

But it was okay, he could take Kiba. Even Kiba and Shino. Probably. Shino was kinda spooky.

“And when you do that,” Ino continued, unaware of Naruto’s impending fight for his body parts, “you need to figure out what-”

“And whom,” Sakura piped up.

“-you want _before_ you let another infatuated acquaintance drag you into a relationship. Okay? Regardless of whether that acquaintance is our mutual friend.”

Naruto scratched his head. “We have a lot of mutual friends?” It was the first complete sentence he had managed to say since he entered the shop, and he was a little proud of it.

He looked at Sakura.

Sakura’s venomous glare reassured him that she was not the ‘acquaintance’ in question.

Ino closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and looked at Naruto just like Iruka-sensei used to look at him during math. “Well, Shikamaru’s not actually giving you advice out of pure altruism.”

“It’s his job,” Naruto agreed. “On account of his being the advisor. I mean, technically he should advise Kakashi, but Kakashi-”

“Shut up,” Ino snapped and, oh, that was Iruka-sensei’s tone. Next would be either detention or a heavy sigh and an offer of ramen in the hopes that Naruto couldn’t talk while he was eating. Which he totally could, to Iruka-sensei’s unending disappointment.

“Shikamaru seemed worried,” Naruto remembered.

“Yes-” Ino flapped her hand dismissively, “-and I’m sure his friendly concern for your and Hinata’s respective future happiness is what motivated him to get off his lazy arse and _talk_ to you.”

“It actually felt more like he was angry at me?” Naruto countered.

Mostly Shikamaru had just looked hurt, but that sounded like it was private, and he didn’t want to give Ino any more ammunition than she already had. Besides, it seemed like Ino knew more of what was going on than Naruto did, so what would have been the point of telling her?

“Oh, good. You noticed _that_ much.”

“Oh, come on, I’m not _that_ dense.”

“You’re denser than granite,” Ino assured him with a heavy sigh. “Look, Naruto, I don’t think I remember Shikamaru _ever_ opening his mouth and asking for something, regardless of how much he wanted it. Even birthday presents are a guessing game with that guy, and he wins most games he plays.”

“He’s smart.” Naruto shrugged. Shikamaru winning at games was a given.

Ino smacked the back of his head.

He preferred it to Sakura’s punches, but it still wasn’t helping him understand.

“He’s a moron. You’re a matching set, really. Look, Naruto, has Shikamaru actually _asked_ you for something? Anything?”

Naruto thought back to the night conversation at Kakashi’s office, scratching his cheek. “Yes.” Shikamaru had said ‘please’. It had been so weird Naruto didn’t think he would ever forget it.

Shikamaru had asked Naruto to tell him if he was going to stay with Hinata forever.

Because if Naruto was, then Shikamaru would have to adjust his plans.

And he talked about Naruto being his Hokage, which was super cool and made Naruto blush just remembering it, but it really had nothing to do with Hinata.

And dreams. There was something… about dreams…

Oh.

“Welcome to the end of the thought process,” Ino said with mocking sweetness.

Naruto went tomato red.

x

Hinata looked nervous coming to Naruto’s apartment, and he should have thought it through more, because this date sounded like something it wasn’t, but they needed privacy for this, and Naruto knew from bitter experience that even the remotest places and least populated corners were frequented by ANBU.

Who usually popped by at the least opportune moment.

He wished he had a kotatsu like they did at the Hyuuga Clan House, but he hadn’t ever had one and he wasn’t sure if he would know what to do with it. So he seated beautiful Hinata in her beautiful kimono at the beat-up coffee table and made – hopefully passable – tea for them to share instead of the alcohol Ino had suggested.

“Um,” Hinata said after a while of silence. Growing gradually redder, she asked: “Did you have plans for tonight, Naruto-kun?”

This was so odd.

Usually they went out together, met up with some friends or got something to eat and went to see a movie. They did stuff. They talked sometimes, about their days, about their problems at work (those that weren’t classified at least), and they made fun of people together… and most of that was in the presence of their friends.

He felt silly now; Hinata was his friend, too. Why shouldn’t they be able to talk about _anything_?

“We gotta talk about dreams,” he said.

“Dreams?” Hinata blinked at him.

Naruto nodded. He sat down next to her on the sofa (almost new – it had been a house-warming gift that everybody had pitched in for after Naruto had gotten this place) and put his hands on his knees. His fingers dug in a little.

“We worked hard.” He didn’t know how to explain so that it would make sense. He would give it a try, though, ‘cause Hinata deserved that and more. “We _fought_ hard. We lost a lot of stuff. Lots of people. Lots of dreams. Now we gotta make as many dreams come true as we can.”

Hinata’s breath hitched and, quite suddenly, Naruto could tell that they had synched. They were on the same frequency.

“I… I wanted to… change the Hyuuga Clan. For… Neji-nii-san.”

“See, that’s what I mean.” He gesticulated wildly, but only with his left hand so he wouldn’t unintentionally hit her. “So, what do we need to make that happen? Like, _logistically_?”

Hinata hunched and pushed her fingers together. “Oh. Um. I did not – without nii-san here I…”

Wouldn’t know where to start. Didn’t have anyone _here_ to hold her to her word.

Naruto nodded. “I get it. It’s hard to think about it. It hurts.” He had never had the chance to spend much time with Neji, and he regretted that more than he could express. He had known Neji better than he had known Haku, and understood him at least as well. Neji had been one of his precious people. Was. _Was_ one of his precious people – that kind of thing didn’t go away just because Neji was not _here_ anymore.

“N-Naruto-kun…”

Hinata was crying.

But, then, so was Naruto. And maybe they both needed this – to cry about it. To let it all out in front of someone who understood and wouldn’t judge, and Hinata probably didn’t have all that many people like that, because her family was full of shitheads and her teammates had never liked Neji after the Chuunin Exam, which Naruto kinda got, but that didn’t help her.

“I… I miss him…”

“I miss him, too,” Naruto replied.

They bawled.

Hinata tried to hide her face in her hands, but Naruto pulled her closer – they were sharing this, right? they were sharing their grief for their precious person – and she put her arms around Naruto and pressed her face to his shoulder. They were both shaking and sobbing and it got sort of snotty after a while and totally disgusting.

Hinata seemed embarrassed, but she was embarrassed most of the time, and it wasn’t like Naruto looked any better.

“We gotta,” Naruto said after a while, trying to catch his breath, “we gotta make Neji’s dream come true.”

“Yes!” Hinata yelped. “We will! I will!”

“I will help you! I’m gonna snag the Hokage hat for real, and I’m gonna kick the Council’s arses if they try to stop you! Believe it!”

“Believe it!” Hinata croaked back, and they both sorta grinned through the tears.

Naruto held her close, breathed in the smell of her hair, and thought about Neji. About the fall of _his_ hair – Shikamaru hadn’t been wrong about how Naruto had super-intensely noticed it – and about the look in his eyes he got when he thought about something that gave him hope, and about the lines around his mouth that came from scowling too much.

Shikamaru was, of course, right about this, too. Naruto had wanted to trace those lines with his fingertips. Kiss them. Kiss that frowning mouth, too, maybe feel the flutter of Neji’s pulse speed up under his hands.

And he finally got that thing about holding cards close to chests. Because Neji had got that hopeful look in his eyes when he was looking _at Naruto_. And it was gone. Neji was gone, that look was gone, that hope was gone… their chance was gone.

Naruto liked holding Hinata, but her mouth wasn’t frowning. He wanted to touch her, like this – be close and share warmth and trust – but she didn’t make his breath catch and his stomach twist. Except at times like now, when she became a reminder, and he was thinking about somebody whom he could not touch anymore.

“He didn’t tell me,” Naruto muttered. Another pair of tears slipped. “He didn’t – and I’m an idiot, he had to know I wouldn’t figure it out-”

“There was too much happening,” Hinata mumbled, pushing herself a little away from Naruto so they could talk. “At least, that is what he told me when I asked him. I tried to – he had this idea about deference to me and that he should not-”

“But-”

“I told him that isn’t how it works. And it’s not.” And now Hinata’s mouth _was_ frowning. “Is it?”

Naruto looked at her. “You’re my precious person.”

“I am one of your precious people. But not your one in particular.”

Naruto wanted to make her happy so he wanted to argue, but he also didn’t want to lie to her. And she was right. “Making your dream come true is one of my dreams,” he said instead.

He had recently learnt that this meant _I love you_ , and he really, really wanted Hinata to know and believe it.

She mustered a smile, not a really very bright or happy one, even as her hands cupped Naruto’s face and her thumbs brushed over the scars on his cheeks. “And making your dream come true is one of mine.”

Naruto kissed her forehead like he had seen Kiba do it. He kinda got what that was about. It was the _I love you_ without the _blood set on fire_ part.

x

Naruto asked Sakura for tips, and thus ended up lugging a twelve-pound honey jar as something halfway between a bribe and a thank-you gift.

Notably, Ino did not say another word of complaint about being asked for advice, so he guessed he’d done alright (and that he owed Sakura, but she would be happy with some umeboshi from the market).

“This village is full of champion torchbearers,” Ino grumbled, but she seemed to be in a good mood. She even invited Naruto to her house, since she wasn’t on shift right now. “At least Sakura finally grew a chest, so you stopped being interested-”

“Oi!” Naruto protested, dropping to his butt on the engawa. “Sakura is beautiful, and that has nothing to do with it!” In his eyes Sakura always had been (and probably always would be) beautiful, but so were most girls, and that didn’t make him want to get closer to them.

He had wanted to be closer to Sakura, but Sakura wasn’t the type to like closeness, and he respected that. She barely let Ino hug her; outside of a life-and-death situation, Naruto didn’t have a hope of anything but a punch to the head.

“If you say so,” Ino said doubtfully. “Look, Naruto, you wanted to _date_ Sakura, but did you ever actually _want_ her?”

Naruto scrunched up his nose. Sakura was like Hinata – beautiful and warm and precious. But, no hot blood. “No?” he guessed.

Ino nodded, like that was something she had already known, and he was only confirmed it for her.

Naruto leaned back against one of the engawa’s support beams and scowled. Okay. Fine. It looked like _everybody_ knew more about what Naruto felt than he did himself… but at least they were finally helping him make sense of it.

“Alright then.” Ino cocked her hip and put her hand on it. “Right now there are only two... three… no, wait, _four_ important questions.”

“Uh. And they are?” asked Naruto. Was that one of the important questions? It felt important.

Ino flicked her fringe out of her face and looked down at him. “Number one. Were you in love with Neji?”

She really wasn’t pulling her punches.

Naruto’s eyes welled, but he blinked the tears away. He had already cried. The crying was over. The wound was healing; it would take time, but it was on its way. “No. But I could have been.”

Ino nodded, momentarily softening into sympathy. “Just means the chunk that was ripped out of you isn’t as huge. So, are you in love with Hinata?”

Naruto shook his head. He wasn’t going to _talk_ about that – that was private, and he hoped that Ino wouldn’t use it against Hinata, because then he would have to kick her arse and then Sakura would kick _his_ arse.

“Are you in love with anybody?” Ino asked.

Naruto had sort of expected a name in the third question, too, but this way it was a much better question. It put things into perspective – it reminded him that he didn’t _have to_ make any big decisions right now if he didn’t want to. Other people were doing that post-war life-affirming pairing-up, but he could take his time, figure it out, maybe meet new people or reconnect with his friends, or whatever he needed to do to learn the differences between love and love.

“No,” he admitted. “But there are people… who make me feel different.” Mostly _a person_ , but Ino knew that anyway, and there _were_ people.

She laughed at him, and for once there wasn’t any meanness in it. “Yeah, welcome to attraction. What you’re looking for is that intersection between this and love, and then you hope they feel the same way about you and – listen now, Naruto, this is important – you _let them know_ and you _work for it_. Got it?”

Naruto might not have understood, except that Ino pretty much described exactly what Hinata had felt and done toward him. He felt guilty for disappointing Hinata’s hope, and also hugely impressed. Did girls just somehow instinctively know how to do this right?

Or was Naruto really exceptionally dense like Ino told him?

“Was that the fourth question?” he asked.

Ino huffed. “Yeah, I guess. I expected you to say ‘yes’ to the third one, and then the fourth one would have been ‘are you going to do anything about it?’, but that’s probably because I’ve recently had this same conversation with a few other people and that’s how it went with most of them. Something about war and saving each other’s lives stimulates romance.”

Naruto stabbed a finger in the air in her direction. “You coached Shikamaru!”

Ino rolled her eyes. “More like I refused to tell him what he wanted to hear and forced him to confront the truth. He doesn’t need me to shrink his head – just to pull it out of the sand.” She leaned down and petted his head like he was a puppy that had learnt a new trick. “You’re welcome.”

Naruto grinned up at her. “Yeah, thanks, Ino. You’re awesome. I owe you one. Or two. A big one and a small one?”

She tried to hide her giggles behind a really unconvincing grimace. “Leave before you make me despair of Konoha’s future under your leadership, toad-brain!”

x

When Naruto came in to the office on the fifth day since Kakashi scarpered, Shikamaru was already there, reviewing the recently signed trade agreement with Ame.

Naruto drank a jar of coffee, sorted the mountain of Kakashi’s overnight paperwork into the ‘pressing’, ‘sometime this week’ and ‘bullshit’ piles. He created a shadow clone, which stuck out its tongue at him, but (with a lot of rude muttering) sat down in the Hokage’s chair to make an inroad into the first pile.

Naruto perched on top of his own desk, which Shikamaru had temporarily commandeered for himself. “We gotta talk about dreams.”

“Dreams?” Shikamaru asked. His eyes shifted to the side where they landed on Tsunade-baa-chan’s portrait on the wall. “Huh,” he added nonchalantly.

Naruto didn’t buy it. After all, Shikamaru was the one who had brought it up in the first place. “This thing with how it’s my dream to make my precious people’s dreams come true.”

“You would interpret it that way,” Shikamaru said resignedly.

“‘cause it’s true,” Naruto explained. “That’s the way it works. So when you just put it like that, how am I supposed to figure out that you mean the blood-boiling part, too?”

“Blood… boiling…” Shikamaru repeated slowly. With clearly displayed immense mental effort, he figured out the logic behind it. He groaned and glared at Naruto like he was questioning why he had crawled out of bed that morning if all he could look forward to was Naruto’s stupidity.

But Naruto wasn’t deterred, maybe a little because he was kinda stupid, but mostly because Shikamaru had already declared himself. He _liked_ Naruto, stupidity and all.

“So,” Naruto said, “we gotta talk about dreams-”

The door opened and a trio of mud-stained jounin tracked their way in.

Naruto switched mental tracks so fast he got momentarily derailed. Once he catalogued the team and recalled the mission they had been sent on, he chanced a quick glance in Shikamaru’s direction.

But Shikamaru was already at the shelving rack, looking for the right file. The team came back early, so it took him upwards of ten seconds, but by the time the Captain started giving his verbal report (not even hesitating to give it to Naruto in Kakashi’s absence, which was always a trip), Naruto had the file on his desk and an advisor strategically positioned out of his field of vision.

x

Naruto treated himself to a dinner at Ichiraku’s, because his heart might not have been exactly broken, but it hurt anyway.

He came home at a time when all good little ninja were long since asleep. Millions of stars and a sliver of the moon (tiny and bright, shining white, not looking dangerous at all) lit his way up the stairs, and helped him identify the slumped form camping on the doorstep of his apartment.

“Can I come in?” Shikamaru inquired, squinting into the darkness.

Naruto gave him a hands-up and then refused to let go of his wrist, pulling him past the front door. Once that was closed behind them, he exhaled the breath he had been holding. Still, he pressed his back to the door, blocking the exit. Just in case.

“I thought you were avoiding me.”

“Keeping a professional distance. At the office.” Shikamaru turned on the light, making them both wince. “Some dreams are better talked about in other places than _at work_.”

“Like my living room?” Naruto inquired. It wasn’t much of a living room. A salvaged coffee table, a donated sofa, a few framed photos hung on the walls, some potted plants on the window sill. He meant to get a bigger plant, but he kept finding people to talk to, so he didn’t feel too lonely even without it.

Shikamaru’s mouth twisted wryly. “If that’s as far as I’m invited.”

“You’re invited to the kitchen, too,” Naruto assured him with a grin, and led the way, hoping that Shikamaru wouldn’t run away the second his back was turned. “I’m learning to cook, so I’ve got more than instant ramen for a change.” There was some rice left from yesterday that he could heat up, and he had salmon fillets in the fridge. They could share.

“I’ll take it,” Shikamaru replied with a mixture of humour and exasperation.

Naruto wondered what he had missed this time.

Shikamaru didn’t have the slightest problem with sprawling in a chair and watching Naruto make them food without offering his help. It was a little reassuring, to be honest. And it made Naruto feel irrationally accomplished (as if almost everybody couldn’t cook a simple meal!).

But this was him, providing dinner for himself _and_ his friend. That was cool, right? Right.

“You’re not a half-bad cook,” Shikamaru said once his plate was empty. He put down his chopsticks.

Naruto beamed.

His grin dimmed quickly, though, because Shikamaru folded his hands into his thinking seal, and obviously the serious part of the evening was starting.

The fish lay heavy in Naruto’s stomach. He wondered if he should apologise, but for once he couldn’t think of anything he had done wrong. He had tried his best to be honest and not-arseholish, even though that wasn’t as easy as it sounded. But he had thought he had done alright.

“I heard you broke up with Hinata,” Shikamaru noted.

“I didn’t!” Naruto protested. “It was a totally mutual decision!”

Shikamaru stared at him, mouth half-open in a protest that he had not had the chance to voice, before he groaned and muttered something into his hands that probably only sounded like ‘why do I like you’.

“We talked about dreams,” Naruto continued, scowling ( _not_ pouting) at Shikamaru’s annoyed expression. “And we’re going to help each other accomplish ours, so it’s not like we’ve messed up. It’s just that I didn’t hope back.”

“Yeah,” Shikamaru agreed sarcastically, “she didn’t _boil your blood_.”

It took Naruto a moment to realise where was the problem in that statement. “Oh.”

The wry twist of Shikamaru’s mouth softened into something fond. “I don’t pretend to know how you think, and I _can’t_ predict you, but I’m learning to backtrack your thought-processes. It’s… arduous and time-consuming.”

Naruto guessed that this probably wasn’t a compliment. He tried to smile sheepishly.

“But, it has its rewards.”

Oh, Naruto thought. So Shikamaru had not come just to eat half of his food and deliver his rejection in private. This was the other kind of visit. The kind that Hinata had been so nervous about.

And now Naruto was nervous.

Shikamaru watched his face, backtracked his thought-process, and sighed gustily. “Look, I know you’re a hair man-”

“Not really?” Naruto protested. He didn’t know a whole lot about himself, obviously, and attraction was a new concept even if it wasn’t a new feeling, and he really had no business making a definitive statement like that. Only, the one thing he believed about himself was that he cared a lot more about the inside than he did about the outside.

On the other hand, Orochimaru had had awfully pretty hair.

“Or, yeah, sure, but not only that. And when it comes down to it, that’s not the important part-”

He heard what he had just said; he had not meant it like it sounded, but that didn’t help kill the blush.

“-b-but… uh… I mean that-”

Shikamaru raised his eyebrows, shrugged, and pulled the tie out of his hair. He shook his head and finger-combed through the strands.

Naruto’s breath caught. His jaw sank. “You don’t have to do that!”

Shikamaru grinned. He looked like a completely different person with the hair down and the unfamiliar (not-bored) expression. There was a challenge in his eyes when they met Naruto’s. “Maybe I want to.”

“Look, this – this… it’s not a competition, okay? It’s not. And I’m not doing some kind of super-creepy side-by-side comparison in my head, ‘cause that’s not how-” Naruto’s throat tightened, and for a moment his brain stalled. Liking the inside sounded nice and fair in theory, but the _blood-on-fire_ part depended on the outside a lot, and there was nothing he could do with it, expect maybe try to explain. “You’re _Shikamaru_. I look at you and I see Shikamaru, and Shikamaru’s the guy who’s had my back for a long time. I trust him. He’s smart and lazy and _fun_ , and he didn’t care that everybody hated me when we were kids and skipped school with me anyway, even though he didn’t want to play anything but boring, complicated board games. That’s Shikamaru. He’s a pineapple-head, and right now he’s doing some weird social experiment with letting his hair down, which is _weird_ but interesting and- Can I touch it?”

Shikamaru laughed so hard he folded almost in half with the force of it. “Sure.”

He waited until Naruto was standing in front of him and carefully tracing a strand of hair with his fingers before he continued: “You know, getting you to touch me was the whole point, so I think this strategy worked well.”

Naruto froze. But it was a little too late to take that back, and he didn’t want to, anyway. So he shrugged. “You’re the strategic genius.”

Shikamaru proved it again by getting his hands under Naruto’s shirt. It tickled for a moment and then it felt… um. Good. So good that even though he was still very nervous, Naruto considered inviting Shikamaru to stay overnight.

That was fast. But, people did that, right? And when had Naruto ever postponed anything he could do _right now_?

“You want to stay?” he asked, breathing like he had just finished his fifth lap around the village.

Shikamaru’s fingers did something evil and yet strangely amazing to Naruto’s ribs. He looked up, eyebrows raised. “In your kitchen? No.”

Oh. Oh, that was what Naruto had missed. Shikamaru had not come for _food_ , so he was not interested in _the kitchen_. He had come to get his hands on Naruto’s body, and now that those hands were there, Naruto was _finally_ catching up with the program.

“Um, you’re invited anywhere in the apartment,” Naruto said, a little too focused on the new and exciting sensations to have much thought process left.

Shikamaru had frown-lines on his forehead, ones that didn’t go away even when his face was calm like it was now, and Naruto traced them, but that inevitably led to getting his fingers in the hair again. It was thick. Really, it was ridiculous how much of it there was.

It never looked like it when it was tied back.

Shikamaru pulled Naruto closer by his waistband.

Naruto leaned down and kissed him, first just with lips and then with tongue, too. Blunt nails dug into his sides.

This was – wow. _Wow_. He didn’t have the right words. Warm and slick and tobacco-bitter and dangerous and exciting but also comfortable, but, like, _more_ than that. It was like… like Senjutsu. But not, ‘cause this was another person touching him.

Naruto wanted to pull Shikamaru out of the chair and press himself all over his body, but that would be greedy and rude. This was the part where he was supposed to _ask_ … but he still didn’t know how or what for exactly.

“But you were talking about long-term plans…?” he said, pulling away in the hope that some blood would return to his brain so he could think.

Shikamaru, with hands still under Naruto’s clothes and refusing to let go completely (yeah, they were both scared the other one would change his mind and run), leaned his head back, trying to get his hair out of his face.

Naruto helped him by tidying it up a little, because he had no self-control left.

“Don’t worry about it,” Shikamaru said, as if Naruto would fall for _that_. “Long-term plans, dreams… Some come true, some don’t. You try, and you either succeed or you deal with your failure.”

Or die, he didn’t say, and that really wasn’t the point here.

“ _Ambitions_ ,” Naruto added, remembering how – a lifetime ago – Sasuke introduced himself to Team Seven. You could try and not succeed in a really spectacular way, with a lot of people hurt and pissed at you or dead.

Some things were important enough for you to work for them, and make sacrifices for them, and never stop hoping and, yeah, he got what Ino had been talking about. He wasn’t quite there yet, but Shikamaru must have crossed that line a while ago.

“This is me trying,” Shikamaru pointed out.

Naruto was not quite _that_ dense. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I got it. Let’s hope nobody dies.” He was pretty sure the ‘hurt’ and ‘pissed at him’ parts were inevitable.

But Shikamaru was a chill, laid-back guy, and really smart, and he apparently liked Naruto enough to tell him so… Naruto reached out to card his fingers through the mop of flyaway hair again. “Okay, I may be a hair man.”

Shikamaru snorted. “It grows. Could make it a challenge – who can grow it longer? That’s a long-term plan already.”

Naruto couldn’t quite resist it any longer. His hands were on Shikamaru’s nape, then on his neck. He gently dug a thumb under his jawbone and felt Shikamaru’s pulse speed up even more. Maybe that was some sort of instinct from Kurama, or maybe Naruto was actually that whacked, but he really, really liked this.

Shikamaru’s eyes were dark, pupils wide.

“We…” he breathed, “are going to have to negotiate before this goes any further. I’m down to play, but there’s got to be rules.”

Naruto nodded and pulled his hand – reluctantly – away. He still had very little idea about how this was going to go, but Shikamaru seemed, as always, to be on top of things, and he wasn’t shy about telling Naruto how stuff worked.

Case in point; Shikamaru heaved himself out of the chair with a grumble, and ordered: “Bedroom.”

x

“Yo,” Kakashi said from behind his book as they entered the Hokage office. His feet were up on his desk, but at least he had considerately moved the pile of paperwork Naruto had finished yesterday to the side so it wouldn’t get covered in dusty sole-prints.

“Six days,” said Shikamaru.

Cheered, Naruto moved for the Sandaime’s Mug.

Only to find it empty.

“Oh, that?” Kakashi mused, one smile-narrowed eye watching Naruto over the top of the book. “I thought that was the petty cash. You’re welcome.”

Apparently taking the cue, one of the ANBU on duty suspended a banner from the ceiling. It read: ‘CONGRATULATIONS! IT’S A BOY!’

Naruto considered the pros and cons of early achievement of his dream. He could become Hokage today. He could take the ANBU guard and Kakashi… well, no. No way. He could kick demigods’ and demons’ arses, but Kakashi?

In his dreams. Like, actual unconscious dreams, not ‘ambitions’ or ‘long-term goals’ or whatever.

Still, this called for revenge, especially since Kakashi had apparently known all about how Naruto felt before Naruto had known, and instead of saying anything he had just had a good laugh about it behind Naruto’s back.

“Thank you, Hokage-sama,” Shikamaru said coolly.

Before Naruto had a chance to feel betrayed, Shikamaru leaned down to whisper in his ear. “Subversion. Oiroke? Let’s terrify everyone.” He flicked his thumb in the direction of the banner.

Naruto grinned. Now that put a whole new spin on the words ‘pregnancy scare’!

While Shikamaru filed away the contents of yesterday’s inbox, Naruto tapped his fingers against Shikamaru’s nape where, hidden under the mesh, he had left an ungentle, bruised bite-mark. A ‘this belongs to me’ mark.

Ino hadn’t warned him about the possessiveness.

It was just his luck that Shikamaru was ‘down to play’ and also really good at winning. In a cooperative game they both won, and when it came to competition Shikamaru’s strategy and Naruto’s tactics together were unbeatable, so it made sense to team up.

“Due in to report,” Shikamaru pointed out, and pressed a mission scroll into Naruto’s hands.

Naruto checked it, and it was all he could do not to cackle. He formed a ram seal and changed into a girl, although he did keep his clothes on for the sake of credibility. He poked a boob. The nipples were sorta digging out through his shirt. “I think I’ll go to the Kiri shindig like this, too.”

Shikamaru shrugged.

Naruto checked the clock. Seven fifty-seven. The following three minutes were almost as long as the three minutes until ramen was ready for eating, but finally the last few seconds ticked by and familiar footsteps sounded in the corridor.

The door opened.

“Yo,” Kakashi said, briefly lifting his hand in a mockery of wave. Even that was a totally unfair preferential treatment which made it obvious that Sasuke had always been Kakashi’s favourite student.

Naruto flipped the Hokage a bird, just on principle, because of course Kakashi had not even pulled his nose out of his pornography, like a sad, sad old man that couldn’t get an actual date.

Unlike Naruto.

Naruto blushed. He turned to face Sasuke-

And had to bite the inside of his cheeks to keep himself from laughing his arse off. Sasuke’s jaw had dropped; his mouth hung slightly open, as though he had been about to speak when he froze. His eyes briefly rose to the congratulatory banner and then moved downwards again to look at the blushing female Naruto watching him anxiously.

He went green around the gills.

“Even Orochimaru never went that far, dead last. I’m going back to Oto,” he declared in a strangled voice, spun on his heel and pretty much ran out the door.

Kakashi scrambled to try and catch him before he managed to defect for real. Again.

The ANBU detail let out a few curses and followed on his heels.

And Naruto laughed his head off, draping himself over his friend – his _boyfriend_ – admittedly not quite his ‘one in particular’ yet, but maybe by the time Naruto’s hair reached past his shoulders he would be that, too – who obligingly held him up, barely even grumbled about what a pain it was and looked immensely satisfied by both Sasuke’s and Kakashi’s reaction.

Shikamaru was unexpectedly even cooler than Naruto had thought! Pranking! Pranking collaborations! They were a team!

“Oooh,” he wheezed, squashing his boobs against Shikamaru’s arm, “we are going to have _so much_ fun together.”

**Author's Note:**

> canonical character death, mourning (I made myself cry), end of a relationship, outing, non-angsty sexuality crisis (like Naruto is really okay with it once someone points it out to him, that’s not the problem), underlying themes of child abuse and neglect (there is a reason why Naruto has no clue), implied PTSD, unreliable narrator, implied D/s


End file.
